The Same Coin
by FireflySummer
Summary: Short-term, Erskine's serum is a miracle drug. Long-term, it's killing Steve. For Steve Roger's it's the end of the line, but it's not the end of his legacy. Rated T for violence, terminal illness, and major character death.


**This fic has been running around my head for a couple months. There is a ridiculous amount of angst involved. Good luck.**

The first person to notice was Steve.

There was no way for him _not_ to notice. Although he could not throw a man through a wall without straining a muscle, he could always feel his old infirmities at the fringes. They skirted his now-healthy body like ghosts, phantom pains where his mind told him to _slow down before the asthma catches you, don't push too hard your body can't handle this…_

So of course, he was the first one to notice when the phantom pains became real once more.

The first signs came just after another battle—sharp pain, deep in the marrow of his bones.

He didn't break easy, not since the serum, but there were exceptions to that. The day had been rough, and filled with an unfair number of explosives and hard landings, so he ignored the twinge of pain and wrote it off as a fracture or break that would be healed before the week was out.

By the time they were in medical, he had almost forgotten about it. He had a high pain tolerance, built up through a youth riddled with sickness and adulthood without working painkillers, and the ache of his bones didn't hold a candle to going into surgery for bullets without anesthesia. But even if the pain had been worse—and on some occasions, it had been—Steve wouldn't have mentioned it. His team was intact, _he_ was intact, and he wanted nothing more than a shower and a good meal.

He should have mentioned it to medical.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The team began to notice, without realizing that they had.

The pain didn't leave. It still was a good deal below his pain tolerance, but it was still there, boring into his skin at all times. It made him antsy and snappish, which awarded him new nicknames from Tony. But that was okay, because that meant that they hadn't noticed, not really, and Steve preferred being teased to being pitied.

In all truth, he knew he should tell the team. If something went wrong in the field, everybody could be in danger. It was the smarter, more responsible thing to do.

But, regardless of how he was held up as the pinnacle of goodness, for some reason smart and responsible always lost out to sheer stubbornness. Steve Rogers did _not_ throw in the towel for anything. He was fine. He had pushed through far worse. He wouldn't be a liability because he would never let that happen.

He was _fine_.

(He wasn't fine. In some deep, dark part of his mind, Steve knew that something was very, very wrong. Something that couldn't be fixed. Which was why he wanted to give the illusion of being fine as long as he could, because once that was gone, it was gone forever.)

(But he wasn't fine.)

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The pain and whatever it heralded _did_ affect his performance. As the days went on, the pain continued to inch toward his ridiculously high tolerance, and the world began haze like there was cotton in his ears. He zoned out, frequently, and tried to ignore the tightness in his chest that felt frighteningly like an oncoming asthma attack.

It was impossible for the team not to notice, but they read everything the wrong way. Aside from worried glances and hushed conversations that Steve no longer had the energy to interrupt, pamphlets were beginning to show up, probably snitched from Sam.

They assumed that if he was hurting _physically_, that he would _tell them_. They assumed that whatever was a matter of mind and emotions.

"I know that you're worried about Barnes," Sam told him, "But bottling it up like this...it's going to kill you." Steve nodded gravely, took the pamphlets, and began attending VA sessions at a building in New York.

"You do realize that your secrets are safe with me," Natasha said, catching him one evening staring at a pad of paper he didn't have energy to sketch on. Again, Steve had nodded and poured out part of his soul to him, telling her what she wanted to hear: that he was adjusting but the deal with Bucky had set him back. That he would get back on his feet soon, and not to worry so much.

(_You're a terrible liar_. Natasha had told that to him on more than one occasion. This time was no different, he could see it in her eyes that she hadn't fallen for it. But she let the matter lie.)

He was touched, really, about how much all of them cared…how much he'd let _himself_ care. But even the saintly Captain America had his limits, and that limit was reached when Tony Stark tried his hand at lecturing him.

He didn't remember what Tony had said to make him so angry, could only remember the hot, angry words pouring out of him, sliding through the hole that the pain was slowly ripping in his soul.

_You must really love this, don't you? The great Tony Stark finally able to see Captain America falling apart. Are you surprised at what you see? A man—a human, just like you, and do you know what? I don't care anymore. Say what you want, but leave me __**alone**__._

The words weren't yelled or screamed, but they might as well have been for the void they'd left behind. Steve regretted them the moment they'd passed his lips, but he was still too angry (not at Tony…no, not really at Tony) to apologize for them. So he'd left his friend standing there, gaping like all the halls of Asgard had just run down his hallway, and retreated to his quarters.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

It took him several hours to work up to apologizing to Tony. It wasn't anger or resentment that held him back—after the anger had abated, shame had very quickly come in its place. Before he could get up and make amends, however, the pain settled in. It was one of the worst waves, and left him breathless in fetal position on the floor of the overly-furnished apartment that Tony had arranged for him, trying not to scream or cry out and thanking God that he'd already arranged for a space in the tower without JARVIS's omniscient presence.

He must have blacked out, because when he came to the ambient light had shifted and changed, and the pain had faded once more into a manageable throb.

He should go apologize to Tony, he knew. Apologize for the angry words that had slipped, without thinking, not really targeted as his friend but spoken nonetheless. Apologize so that Tony didn't try to drown his own fears and insecurities in alcohol, for an insult that had not been meant for him. Apologize and tell him _why_. Tell them all why, because they deserved to know, and the team didn't deserve to be broken apart, just because he was broken.

But before he could make it to the stairs, the alarms blared out and it was time to suit up once again.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Things did not go as smoothly as he hoped they would. He had broken something, in his argument with Tony, torn a hole in the trust that they had built together. The Avengers tried to follow his lead, but he could feel the tension in the air. He pretended to ignore it, because only he knew that this would be their last battle together, and he intended to make it count.

He could feel the pain, hovering against his periphery, waiting to consume him the moment he let his guard drop. He threw himself into the fight with all the fury of a dying man, well aware that his bones—that months before had been strong enough to withstand greater force than humanly possible—were not only pained, but fragile, fracturing easily as he took hits and as thrown bodily against the street and buildings they were fighting in.

But as a small mercy, the first he had received in so long, he did not collapse during the fight. It wasn't until he had seen the villain dead and his team safe that the monstrous pain caught up with him, and he sank to the broken earth.

Somebody was beside him, trying to get his attention by calling his name over and over again. But his mind, so steeped in the cloying pain that clawed at every muscle and bone of his once-powerful body, could not make sense of it.

"What happened!?"

"I don't know, he just collapsed. He's conscious but unresponsive." Tiny, precise hands prodded at his body, searching for wound or injury and finding none external.

"Steve, can you hear me?" Red hair. Gray eyes. Natasha then. He nodded, focusing mostly on forcing himself to keep breathing. "You need to tell me what happened. Where are you hurt?"

Steve let out a strangled sound that could have been a laugh, if it hadn't been smothered somewhere in his chest. "Ev…erywhere."

The world blurred together into meaningless colors and sounds, as Steve squeezed his eyes shut against the pain.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Steve knew the where he was before he opened his eyes. The sounds of beeping instruments were becoming too familiar, but they were clearly not expecting him to wake yet, otherwise somebody would have turned on some music, if only to assure him that he was still among friends.

Instead of music, he could hear people talking, although it took a little longer than he should have hoped to sort out exactly _who_ was speaking.

"So Doc, tell us what happened out there." Tony, his voice straining in a way that was usually reserved for worry over Pepper.

"Out there? Nothing more than the usual. A couple dozen fractures. Broken bones in his pelvis, left leg, and both forearms." Bruce sounded nervous, and Steve could tell from tone that he _knew_.

Tony, however, did not. "What do you mean that's _the usual_? Are you trying to tell me that Steve sustains that much battle damage every time we go out there, and _doesn't tell us_?"

"Well, there is enough scar tissue to imply something to that degree," Bruce replied, "But while this does seem a bit excessive for this particular battle, there is something…more pressing."

Whatever Bruce had to say, he must not have said it, favoring instead to pull something up on a screen. The silence that followed was unbearable, so loud that Steve could hear only the sound of his still-beating heart.

"What am I looking at here?" Tony said, his voice quiet and dangerous.

"These are some simple scans that I took of the captain while attempting diagnosis," Bruce explained, doing his best to keep his voice cold and clinical, "Things looked…wrong on the x-ray I ran to find broken bones, so I ran a full-body CAT scan, and this is what I found."

"But what _is_ it?" From his tone, it sounded as though Tony knew exactly what he was seeing, but wasn't ready to accept it.

"Tony," Bruce said, "Steve has cancer."

Another silence, this one longer. Steve opened his eyes, aware that he would be completely ignored for the time being.

"No." Tony said, voice firm as though this was a decision entirely up to him. "No he doesn't."

"Tony…"

"He _can't_, Bruce. He's a superhero, and superheroes don't die of something like cancer." Tony was looking at the scans again, as though sheer willpower could change the truth. "What about the serum? Shouldn't the serum…_prevent_ this sort of thing!?"

"I actually think the serum is the root of this." There was something breaking in Bruce's voice, as he tried to hold both him and Tony together. "The serum…it fixed his body, originally. New cells, better cells, producing and producing until he's over six feet tall and strong. But what if there's no off switch, Tony. If the cells keep going on like that…" Bruce's voice trailed off, unable to finish the thought as though it would finally declare the death sentence that Steve had lived with for so long now.

"You get cancer." Tony finished it for him, his initial panic washed away with a sudden determination. "But…we can fix that, right? I mean, I fixed the palladium poisoning problem, didn't I? A little cancer shouldn't be much of a problem."

"If it was a 'little cancer' it wouldn't be," Bruce agreed, "but Tony, this isn't a 'little cancer'. It's everywhere—bones, lungs, nearly every one of his internal organs. The brain is the least touched, but even that is showing signs. Even if we could surgically remove the tumors, the cancer is still there, and at it wouldn't be long before they'd be back. There's nothing we can do."

"_The hell there isn't!_" Tony's voice echoed sharply on everything in the sterile room. Every ounce of desperation, anger, confusion, and fear that Steve had felt in the past months was put into the cry, but all those emotions had come and gone now that he knew with a certainty where _exactly_ the end of the line lay.

"Tony," he said, surprised at the strength his voice had. Bruce and Tony stopped midway through their conversation and converged on him, both trying to speak at once while both being unable to find the words.

Steve extended his hands, taking one of his friends' in each, and turned to them the most peaceful smile they'd seen in months.

"It's okay," he said, "It's okay."

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

And it was okay.

Not for Tony. Not for Bruce. Not for _any_ of the team, who were still reeling from the absolute feeling of _wrongness_ that followed Steve's official diagnosis.

But for the first time in over seventy years, Steve Rogers felt at peace.

"How?" Natasha asked him one day, as she sat by his bedside.

He had been declared unfit for duty immediately, but had tried to carry on normally. But refusing surgery and without effective medications often left Steve confined to his rooms, which was a bigger blow to his ego than he was willing to let on. Regardless, the others had maintained an air of normalcy, sweeping in and out and each creating a temporary residency in one corner of his room or another in order to keep him company without making him feel a burden.

"How what?" he asked, looking up from the tablet on his lap. Today was a good day, with the pain abated just enough to keep his thoughts clear.

"How can you possibly be at peace?" she clarified, and Steve wondered if this was not the most honest question that she had ever asked. She was revealing more of herself at one time than she'd ever done before, her emotions stormy in her eyes. But then, he supposed that dead men tell no tales.

"It's…hard to describe," he explained, "I guess it feels right?"

"Death should never feel right."

"But it shouldn't really feel wrong. Tragic maybe, but not wrong, because no matter how hard we try, death will always catch up."

"You're cheerful today," she said, as though uncertain whether she wanted to change the subject.

"Natasha," he said gently. "I never expected to live this long. Back in the 40s…I was expecting maybe to see another couple decades, tops, let alone the turn of the century. And when I went under the ice? That speaks for itself. Even…even the Battle of New York or the destruction of SHIELD. I wasn't expecting to live…maybe I didn't even want it, because it felt more _wrong_ that I was I was still alive."

"If death should never feel wrong, then neither should life," Natasha asserted, and Steve could see in her eyes that she knew this from experience.

"I know," he said, "But what I'm saying is that this has been a long time coming. And it's okay, because even though I've not been running from death, I've finally stopped running from life."

"So that doesn't bother you then?" Natasha asked, "That you've finally found something to live for, and now you don't have the chance to do it? What about Barnes? What about all those dates you never went on?"

"It's hard to describe Nat. Having something to live for is the same coin as having something to die for; they're just on opposite sides."

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

"But why?" Tony asked, eyes firmly trained into the drink that he was nursing. Bruce eyed him, marking how many glasses past healthy his friend had gone.

"Why what?" Bruce replied, knowing full well to what Tony referred. He almost hoped that Tony wouldn't answer, because it wasn't something Bruce particularly wanted to talk about.

"Why him?" Tony waved his hand, as though the answer were out there to be grabbed out of the air. "Just…it's not right. I mean, he is _good_. I know we're the good guys and all, but he is _good_. He's the one that can rally an army with a speech, because they trust him and his _goodness_. Someone like me? I'm a genius, but I'm not that good. I'm not the one the world _needs_, but I'm…I'm still here."

Tony turned a bleary eye on Bruce. "You're awfully quiet, given my self-destructive tendencies."

"Bargaining is a normal part of the grieving process," Bruce said. The answer was so clipped, so clinical that Tony knew there was a storm raging just beneath the man's skin. In their relationship, he had learned that Bruce was capable of a full range of emotions—sorrow, love, joy—but only ever pretended to be calm when he was the very opposite.

"And?" Tony prompted, deciding that if there were any day to push the envelope, it may as well be today.

"And I would be lying if I hadn't wondered why it was _his_ serum that had to go wrong." Tony stifled a snicker, but there was no malice behind it. "My life has been…hard. But I've always thought it was penance, that maybe somehow…"

"You deserved it? Nah, Bruce, you didn't deserve any of it. Or at least you deserved yours less than I deserved a chest full of shrapnel."

"But Steve," Bruce countered.

"Yeah…Steve." Tony agreed, as though there was nothing else to add in terms of argument. It was just.._Steve_.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Time dragged on. Steve's conditioned worsened with the passing days, the serum both creating the cancer and then refusing to let him die from it. Most days he was nearly comatose, taken by a fitful sleep. Other days he was awake and coherent, and those days were always worse by far. They were the days that Steve would struggle tirelessly against the pain to present himself as normal.

But things were drawing to an end.

Just as Steve had sensed when the changes first began to affect his body, he could sense the end of the line. He didn't have a time and date, but he could feel it—the end of the line, approaching readily.

What he had told to Natasha was true. He was okay with this. At peace with it even.

That didn't mean that there wasn't unfinished business or regrets. When he was awake, he could push them away and keep them at bay, but it was in his fitful half-dreams that they came for him. There were always regrets for the memories that could have been, and the life that he could have lived. He'd never fulfilled his promise to call Sharon. He'd never learned how to dance. He'd never brought home Bucky Barnes.

But it was too late for that now. He could only hope that Peggy, who had passed not long ago, would be waiting for him at the pearly gates, and that her husband wouldn't mind him taking one dance.

It was just past three when Steve roused from his almost sleep, to find a figure standing over him, a black form in a black room. He should have been frightened, or even surprised, but instead he felt the first real smile in far too long creep over his face.

"It was just a nightmare, Buck," he whispered, voice almost as frail as it had been, over seventy years gone by.

"Stupid punk," came the growled reply. It was rough and broken in some places, but here, in the dark, they couldn't see the decades of wear that had taken its toll on them both. "I'm not singing you any lullabies."

"Good. I wouldn't want to have more nightmares."

The silhouette gave a watery laugh, and Steve felt a hand run through his hair. Steve brought his own up to hold to it, make sure it didn't vanish like another one of his dreams.

"I'm glad it's me this time," Steve wheezed, trying to find all the words he hadn't had a chance to say.

"What are you talking about, idiot?"

"The serum…it's killing me, I think. Turns out mine was the dummy batch, not yours. And…I'm not glad they did that to you, but I'm glad that it's me, right now, and not you."

"Why!?" The word came out harsh and angry, and Steve flinched despite himself.

"Because I let you fall," he whispered, the shame of seven decades coloring his words. "I didn't go after you. But the one time I fell, you jumped after me."

Silence. Steve had been getting used to those of late, but this one was nigh unbearable. Suddenly there was an arm around his neck—not a cloying, killing arm, but one meant to hold him tight, as though that could secure them both to the earth. And maybe, for this moment, it was enough.

"I never blamed you," came the choked whisper, "I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat, Steve…"

"Don't," Steve whispered back, "I survived until I had a reason to live. And now…now it's your turn." A pause, then tentatively. "Stay with me?"

"Only if you don't go where I can't follow."

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

In the morning, Steve was gone.

It happened so unexpectedly, so peacefully, that they may not have found out for hours, if JARVIS had not alerted them that there was an intruder in the building.

It had taken them too long to realize that Steve was the target, but by the time they had assembled and made their way to his suite, he was gone.

Gone, along with the intruder who left no trace.

Gone, along with the shield that had remained propped against his bedside table, even when he could no longer lift it.

Gone was Steve Rodgers, a peaceful smile frozen on his face, as if everything really was okay.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

There was a funeral, of course. It wasn't a big affair at all—a small ceremony of his closest friends, and an official statement to the media. The paparazzi, who of course had noticed Steve's recent public absence, clamored all over Stark Tower, spitting out conspiracy theories one after another. They finally crossed a line when somebody cornered Bruce, demanding answers, and nearly set off another national crisis as a result.

The paparazzi weren't the only ones testing their limits, of course. Once it came out officially that the great leader of the Avengers had been killed, wannabe supervillains came crawling out of their slime pits by the dozens, searching for chinks in their armor left by Steve's absence.

Tony wished that they could have found none, but it wasn't true. The hole Steve left felt less like a hole and more like an asteroid striking earth. There was nothing clean about its impact, there were too many pieces to ever be put back together, and they were changed. Forever.

The turning point came when HYDRA finally decided to show its fangs, emboldened by the death of their archenemy. The attack they launched was no Insight, but Thor was off-planet and without the Captain there…well, Tony had tried to be the leader, but his file said it all. He didn't play well with other kids.

Then, when the man with dark hair, leather clothes, and a metal arm took center stage, Tony knew they were truly and genuinely screwed. Because if HYDRA had the Winter Soldier back on their pay roll, there was no longer any Steve Rogers to stop him.

The fear and disbelief lasted only as long as it took Tony to notice the shield, _Steve's shield_, which had been missing since the day he died, held firmly by the man once known as the Winter Soldier.

The man turned towards the enemy, and he was not Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier, but Captain America.

And so the legend lived on.


End file.
